Chernobyl anniversary... and events today

As we find ourselves, incredibly, at the 25 year anniversary of the accident at Chernobyl, we read that Dmitri Medvedev has been quoted in the press as saying that the Chernobyl accident taught us that we need transparency in the operation of nuclear power plants. Or something to that effect.

Wrong.

The Chernobyl accident taught us the following, in no particular order:

1. Very large, loosely coupled reactor cores can be very dangerously unstable.
2. Safety interlocks and protections should never be overridden.
3. Proper containment for all DBA's must be provided for any plant of any size.
4. Operating entities must never allow test procedure deadlines to subvert a conscious sense of safety-mindedness and questioning attitude.
5. No graphite moderated reactors should be built or operated ever again. The release from the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and the Windscale accident in Great Britain in 1957 are the two highest in history, and both were from graphite moderated reactors of large size. As readers here know the only RBMK-1000 plants still operating are inside the Russian Federation.

We could come up with some further things, but we'll stop here to make this tie-in: You'll notice that NONE of these correlates to events at Fukushima Daiichi. As a matter of fact, they don't correlate to TMI either, and TMI doesn't correlate to Fukushima Daiichi either. This just further points out the irrelevance of all the comparisons being made in the general press as we witness the ongoing situation in Japan and simultaenously arrive at this quarter-century mark for the Chernobyl accident.

More on Chernobyl background to follow this evening.

8:12 PM Eastern Monday 4/25
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW